Expectations — the Art of Being Disappointed. – Rebelle Society
{Photo via pinterest.com}
By Heidi Hinda.
How many of us get a little tango-tangled from time to time with that big ol’ word ‘expectation’?
Got your hands up yet?
A single word equals one huge recipe for a disastrous trip that’s nearly always in cahoots with disappointment. Oh, and delusion too.
So, what’s a girl to do? Lock away all hopes and dreams and settle down with Dickensian tomes? Well, count me out of that club.
Expectation seems to occur at a time when I have momentarily looked away from the here and now — my mind’s discerning guest list forgotten, and ‘being’ in the present moment is temporarily occupied with some distraction.
Wondrous scenarios unfold and I follow, getting lost in my own fantasy world until I bump up unpleasantly against reality. Disappointment strikes.
You see, the risk of expecting and feeling disappointed is part of the handbook of a life well lived. You wish to avoid it? By all means, hide away, be safe, close the door, only parting the shutters for that which is known and secure.
Allow nothing in that will hurt you or rock your nest; a womb that has no room for mystery or possibility, no room for all the shadings of a color book life. Remember those coloring books? All black lines on white sheets; lovely and neat yet bland as fuck.
I am bored of those lines, bored of edges all neat and sweet; all of it a miasma of false comfort in an unsafe world. Give me instead my marker pens and let me at the page.
I’ve spent years living in the box, behind the lines. It’s my heart that’s been protected all that time, a vintage heart that I’ve sought to mollycoddle in a swaddled blanket of numbness and granite protection.
The act of expecting can be about anything — from the outcome of an interview, to the promise of a night out. A first attempt at making cake, the wish for another to behave in a certain manner, or the false assumption that owning a teapot will change your life.
Yet, if I’m being really honest here, I expect most when there’s the possible sniff of interest from him (insert here any number of fine-seeming men who have caught my eye).
A few words of connection, a dare to offer the first I like you. I jump on the expectation train only to find that it’s not leaving the station; it’s going nowhere after all.
So I’ve decided to get off.
You see, getting off the train of expectation means I’m back in life as it’s happening.
And yes, I feel sore, disappointment hurts and makes my eyes water and my heart go Ouch like a pin-pricked finger, but that’s just it — I hurt and carry him in my heart all the same.
If we stay present and avoid the lure of carnival-esque seductions, life can be rather beautiful. We live in the moment, and with that, we live in a space of endless, wonderful, delightful, blissful, unexpected and joyful surprise.
These days, I am keeping a tight rein on my mind’s desire to set expectations. But my heart still expects, as hearts are wont to do, and I refuse to settle for a bland, color-in-the-lines kind of life.
So all the while, I’m remembering to say Yes to disappointment. Yes to my heart being pricked, Yes to falling over, to doing it all wrong, to being wildly inappropriate.
Yes to the wooded secrets and shaded silences, blue days and low moods, to tears and snotty nasal gazes, to wearing my bruised yet drum-beating heart so all can see its sea-salted core.
And most of all, Yes to holding on to hope, because hopelessness and a riskless life just isn’t my style.
*****
Heidi Hinda’s intention is to serve the creative spirit, to honor the soul, and to stand in life saying a huge hearty ‘YES!’ to what pulls on the ol’ heartstrings, and to say a firm, finger-wagging ‘NO!’ to all that squashes us smaller than who we were created to be. Heidi offers workshops and retreats that weave together Yoga, dance, art-making and ritual. Visit her website to learn more.
Read More:
Heart Advice: When Love is Without Action.
{Love it out}
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